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Monday, August 30, 2010

As I was moving furniture and taking apart the window seat in Lillabel's room on Saturday all while trying not to succumb to the morning sickness I was asking myself "have I completely lost my mind"? I mean seriously, her room did not NEED to be painted. Sure, the baby pink nursery no longer seemed to fit my spunky little toddler but I certainly could have a waited a few more months until I was feeling better and I had family in town to help and made it much easier on myself. Unfortunately, though I have a disease. I read this post about decorating and rearranging on Home and Harmony's blog a little while ago and laughed out loud as I read it because of how true it was! For me, once I officially decided I wanted to paint her room gray I could not get it out of my mind! So, Dana and I painted away on Saturday afternoon while Jon took Lillie to the river and we got it done. I am so excited about it and really love how it turned out! I haven't taken any pictures yet, but will probably take a couple later today and show you one or two later this week, but am waiting until I find her "big girl" bed to take some real photos. I started looking on Craigslist this weekend and we are going to hunt through the antique malls and thrift stores this week to see if we can find one.

Not only do I have this lovely decorating disease, but my mom and sisters do as well. Although, I would think they would all like to say they do not have it as bad as I do and that I am a little crazy when it comes to this! Even my dad and brother love to organize and arrange things. I would NOT call what they do decorating, though. Jason has a very complex system in his room for all of his "collections" and my dad, well, I don't even know what to call his constant arranging of things. Pretty much his disease is more of an OCD problem, than a decorating one seeing how his constant need to rearrange things is seldom visually appealing - haha! My poor mom!

So, seeing how I don't have any pictures to show you yet of Lillie's room I thought I would share a few from Dana's apartment. (Also, I know I had promised to show some of Jamie's dining room and kitchen in her new home before I left NH but we were STILL waiting on a back ordered chandelier that was the finishing touch on the room and I didn't want to take pictures without it. It has FINALLY arrived so next time I am up in NH I will take pictures because I am dying to show you all!)

Most everything you see in any of our homes is done on a budget. Dana's, however, I think is by far the most impressive as far as being creative while using almost no money. What she did with a couple hundred dollars is truly inspiring and, in my opinion, gorgeous! She is really creative and I think it really shows in her space. In this post I am just going to show her living room and dining room. I will show pics of her bedroom in another post at some point.

What is most impressive to me is that except for the sofa and the mantel - which were Christmas presents, and the TV - which was a birthday present, every other piece of furniture was free from other family members garages, basements and even barns. She painted it all and fixed everything up so it would look cohesive! I wish I could have shown you what everything looked like to start with. You would be amazed!

The lamp was from my garage and the ottoman was a hand-me down that completely didn't match so she covered it with a cotton shower curtain she had from her last apartment. It had water stains so she couldn't use it as a shower curtain anymore but instead of throwing it out she cut and sewed it so you couldn't see the stains!

Total Cost: $0

The tray was from Target and was $29 and the vase was on sale at Pier 1 for like $6

The rosette balls are made from about $8 worth of foam balls and about $20 worth of Silk Dupioni.

Total Cost: $63

The love seat was from my garage and Dana covered it with $10 sheets from Target so that it would coordinate with her white sofa from Ikea. The curtains were $10 panels from Target.

Total Cost: $20

The dresser was from my parent's barn. It was in Dana's room when she was really little. She painted it and two end tables that were all different wood tones. She painted them all black so they would look unified in her space. The artwork was from the Williamsburg Antique Mall and was around $29 or so.

Total Cost: $29

Dana made both of the rosette pillows from a set of $10 black sheets from Target! Don't they look so expensive? I think they are one of my favorite things in her apartment. She then stuffed them with some extra standard bed pillows.

Total Cost: $10

This pretty pillow was a gift our sister Jamie made for her (she made me some too in a silvery blue and white color for my guest room that you can see on my sidebar)

Total Cost: $0

This chair was our great-grandmothers and had been in our parent's basement for years and to be honest, was quite hideous! It was a weird wood tone and had a nasty greenish cushion. Dana painted it a high gloss white and then used extra fabric from an old project to recover the seat! It was such a transformation! (And the pillow she stole frome me - haha!)

Total Cost: $0

The curtains were from her last apartment and the table and chairs were from her college apartment that we found in second hand store for next to nothing. She painted them a different color in her college apartment but painted it a high gloss white to go with everything here. We are still on the hunt for some cool dining chairs to reupholster or paint. It's probably the only thing in her apartment that doesn't quite look right but they work for now until we can find something cool! The mirror was from my garage Her table setting were around $10.

Total Cost: $10

The miscellaneous candles and accessories are from Pier 1 and TJMaxx and were bought on clearance for a total of around $20.

Total Cost: $20

We found these cool napkins at Pier1 on clearance for $1.25.

Total Cost: $2.50

The trunk is from my garage. I found it about six years ago and I still love it but it didn't fit anywhere in our new house. =( Another rosette pillow and a bolster from Dana's last apartment. The picture above was something Dana found in Florida and paid around $10 for.

Total Cost: $10

It just goes to show you what a few paint cans and some elbow grease can do! It is so easy to find free or really cheap furniture. You can go to yard sales, look on Craigslist and often even raid family members garages and basements. And if you are just a little bit creative you can make it all work together! If you include the different paint colors (white, black and the gray for the walls) which were probably around $80 or so. If you add that to her other costs the total amount that she spent on her apartment was around

$245!

Can you believe that?

And if think, well, you didn't include the cost of the sofa or the mantel because they were gifts so that isn't fair. Well, I think the sofa was around $400 and the mantel was $100 so even throwing those in her entire living room and dining room came to $745! (I didn't include the TV because I have no idea how much it was and it doesn't really have to do with the decorating, anyway!)

Well, Lillie is still napping so I had better get back to sewing! I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Wow! It has been quite a week. Except for the very exciting baby news, everything else has gone very much NOT according to plan! Arghhhh! I was supposed to have all of the children's screenprinted items back from the printers on Wednesday and then all of the women's back by Thursday. I was going to try to bring Lillie, Dana, and our new employee Catherine (will write more about her soon!) down to Colonial Williamsburg to take pictures and have them all listed Friday and Saturday. Well, that was definitely not meant to be. When I went to pick up the remainder of the children's shirts on Wednesday (I had picked up the Cuddle Bug and Model Tee designs Tuesday) they only had the Mary Poppins one done. At first I was incredibly disappointed, however, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise! When I got out to the car and opened my package I was absolutely APPALLED! The colors were completely wrong on half of them and never mind that they were the wrong colors they were also the most neon colors I have ever seen (which is completely NOT my style) and the colors were all bleeding together, the underbase - which wasn't needed - was showing through and the ink was thick, plasticy and bubbling in places. You couldn't even read most of the words. I was shocked and so crushed I almost starting bawling. I will blame that on my hormones, though =)...... I took a deep breath and called Jon. He suggested we eat out to prevent me from completely melting down, which I thought was a great idea. I was exhausted and it was late and the thought of making dinner at that moment seemed rather overwhelming. We were going to go to Five Guys which was about two minutes from where I was. Well, I got completely and utterly lost and it took me like forty-five minutes to get there and ended up on the wrong side of town. I won't bore you with the rest of my mishaps but that has pretty much been how this week has gone. Anyway, back to the screenprinting. There was no way in the world I was going to be using that company any more. What bothered me so much was not so much that they messed up, but that they didn't tell me and sent them home with me! We asked them not to print anything more and Jon went in the next morning to pick up the rest of my shirt and then I hunted around all day Thursday and found another company who could squeeze me in. I sent them all of my artwork Thursday afternoon and then I went over there Friday and was amazed! They completely understood the muted, vintagey looking prints I wanted and when we went to back they were in the process of printing an extremely detailed tiny print in multiple colors and it was flawless! Truly it was an incredibly intricate design and it was perfect! I cannot tell you how relieved and excited I am about this. Even though I was upset about the setback and the frustration of this week I think in the long run I am going to be so so so so so much happier with the end product here and quality is by far the most important thing to me. So, to bring this horribly long and boring paragraph to an end I will have a few designs available at some point next week and then hopefully will have all of them ready the following week. I am so sorry about the delay but I do think the wait will be worth it! I want to be able to be sending out a product I am proud of and I feel so much more confident about that now! And to be honest, despite all of the added stress, I actually am feeling more excited than ever about the screenprinted items because of my experience today at this new shop!

Okay, onto something a bit cheerier! We are going to be painting Lillie's room tomorrow! I am so so so so excited! After Jon saw the blog post a few days ago he started warming up to the idea. Then when I found out that they had painted their locker room at William and Mary today I was able to convince him that we certainly could paint Lillie's room tomorrow! I was even trying to figure out a way to bribe some of the boys into coming over and helping (although I suppose the NCAA would probably frown upon that) until I heard them talking about it at the team dinner we had at the Shaver's house tonight. Watching Coach Shaver demonstrate how some of them painted the trim work made me quickly realize we were probably better off without the team helping. Hahaha! So, tomorrow Dana is going to come over and help me while Jon takes Lillie to the park and we are going to see if we can get about half of it done before her nap and hopefully the rest done after her nap and before bedtime. I was planning on using the same color that we used in our master bathroom, but am starting to think I may go one shade lighter. Her room only has one small window and it might be better going a hair lighter. Ahhh - decisions, decisions.......

On another note, we are having a sale on our Savannah Tank!

It will go back to it's regular price on Monday but for tomorrow it is only$39.95!

The dark gray and black would look great for fall and it would look really cute layered under a black cardigan!

Send us an e-mail Jessica with your address so we can get that made and shipped out for you! If we haven't heard from you by Sunday night we will draw a new winner on Monday.

We will be hosting another giveaway here within the next week so be sure to check back.

In the meantime, Jamie is hosting aPink or Blue Giveaway on The Penny Candy Blog in honor of the new baby Holmes! Be sure to head on over and check it out!

Along with a new giveaway I also have several other new posts planned for next week. I am hoping to take some pictures soon of Dana's apartment and I need to take pictures of Lillie in several of our new Dear Lillie skirts and once her room is finished I will hopefully have lots of pictures of it to share!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Okay, so technically there wasn't a baby in the present. But there were some books about new babies and being a big sister in there for Lillie! We just found out this weekend and told our families and a few close friends, but I was waiting until my doctor's appointment today to actually write it here on the blog! I know that a lot of people frown on announcing it so early, but I am not the patient type of person....this often gets me into trouble, but oh well! Anyway, we are ridiculously excited! (And I am thinking now it will be easier to convince Jon that we should start on Lillie's "big girl" room! In fact, when I asked him last night if we could start painting it this weekend, I didn't get a "no"....although I didn't get a "yes", either, but I figured him not saying no was a step in the right direction, right?....haha)

I also really quickly made her this big sister shirt and we took her over to the William and Mary campus to show everyone!

Well, that's the big news for today!

Also, I do have the cuddle bug onesie listed in the shop and I also have it in both long sleeve and short sleeve t-shirts in sizes 2T, 3T and 4T. I also have the Model Tee one ready to go as well although I haven't listed it yet. I am supposed to be picking up the rest of the kid's shirts today right at this very moment but Lillie is still napping so they may close before I can head on over there to get them. And then I am supposed to be picking up all of the women's ones tomorrow. My goal is to have everything listed by Saturday. I am hoping to actually have everything listed by Friday but am not holding my breath seeing how the morning sickness is already starting to hit pretty hard. Yuck!

Okay, well, seeing how Lillie is still sleeping I am going to try to get some more sewing done! Hope you all are having a wonderful Wednesday!

P.S. Don't forget there are just a couple of days left to enter our clutch giveaway! Either scroll down a few posts, or click here to enter!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Hello Everyone! First, here is a quick update on the screenprinted shirts. They are supposed to finally be ready to go by Thursday afternoon. I think half are being printed Wednesday and the other half Thursday. I will hopefully be able to pick them all up by Thursday and take photos of them on Friday and Saturday and have them listed as soon as the photos are taken. For those of you who have already requested them and are waiting on them, as soon as I have them in my hands I will get them shipped to you.

The women's shirts are regularly going to be between $22.95 and $29.95 (depending on the style) and the children's shirts are going to regularly be between $16.95 and $19.95 (depending on the style).

However, for the first week they are all going to be on sale!

All of the women's shirts will be$18.95

And all of the children's shirts will be$14.95

On another note, here is a photo of a special present we received this weekend.

I will show you all what was in it tomorrow (Wednesday) night!

I hope you all are having a lovely week!

P.S. Don't forget to enter our giveaway to win one of our Montgomery Clutches!!!!! There are only a few days left to enter!!!!!

Sunday, August 22, 2010

For the past several months now I have been wanting to do something with Lillie's room to make it a little more of a "big girl" room instead of a nursery. I have been torn over what to do because she has so many things in her room that were handmade either by myself or my mom or sisters and I didn't want to have to put them away. She is turning into such a little girl now, though and her baby looking room doesn't fit her very fiesty personality. While I was home in NH this summer I saw these two pictures in RH Baby and Child and fell in love! The second I saw them I knew I wanted to use them as the inspiration for redoing Lillie's room. For basically just the cost of a can of paint I think I can transform her room to look more like this first photo! I am going to paint her walls gray. I think I am going to use the same color that I used in our master bathroom, or maybe one shade lighter. And then, with just a few little gray touches throughout the room, that will be all I need to do for now. Then hopefully, in a few more months, when we make the transition from her crib to a bed I will add in some gray bedding and it will be perfect! To be honest, I am itching to paint her room now, but Jon doesn't exactly see it as being very high on our to-do list! I may have to wait until either my parents or Jamie and Dutch's next trip down here to get it done. Normally I would just work on a painting job while she slept, but seeing how it is her room that is rather hard to do. And as much as I love her, it isn't really a project that would be very wise to do with her being my little helper.

I absolutely LOVE this room!

I don't love this one quite as much, but I do love some of the accessories!

Please ignore the absolutely HORRENDOUS quality of this photo (it was taken with an old point and shoot camera and it is so yucky I am not even going to attempt to edit it) - but you can see what her room looks like now. Although I loved it when we first did it, I am starting to get sick of the pale pink walls now and cannot wait to get them painted gray.

As soon as we get it done I will post some photos!

Also, to anyone who has sent us a convo on Etsy. I have been trying to write back for quite some time now but Etsy's convo feature is turned off right now while they are fixing something so it isn't allowing me to get on to write anyone back. Unless it comes back on soon, I will just write back to everyone tomorrow after church.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

This is just a super quick post (seeing how it is now after 3AM and it was going to be my goal to be in bed by 1AM for a change tonight -ughh!!! ) with a few pictures of Lillabel from earlier this week.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Despite the fact that I fell in love with about 50 million things from the antique shops and quaint little stores we went to up in NH this summer, I only bought four small things (partially because nothing more could possibly have fit in our car and partially because Jon would have died). Anyway, here are two of them. I will show you the other two once I take some pictures of them. I am absolutely itching for autumn to arrive so I can start decorating with all sorts of natural fall elements. Fall is always my most favorite time to decorate, but seeing how it is still in the 90's here I know I need to wait a while longer and not jump the gun.

I loved this adorable little bucket! I am trying to find some subtle ways to bring black back into our house. In our first home we had a ton of it and then when we moved here I got almost completely rid of it and painted everything ivory, white or gray, but the past few months have been starting to bring pops of black back in.

I also found this fun burlap pillow to go in our family room! I had hoped to find a pair of them but no luck. Still I really love how this one looks. The little ribbon was on it and now I am trying to find more of it because I would love to use some similar to tie onto the Fairyland Silhouette Tees (image shown in the post below).

I also hung two of my favorite photos from this summer in some frames I had out in the garage above the chairs. Eventually I plan on doing something different, but in the interest of saving money (it cost me $4 to print each picture) this works for now!

I still hate the two fur pillows behind the silhouette ones, but as mentioned in a previous post they were all I had in the garage that were the right size and haven't gotten around to buying or making new ones yet. I really really love some from Restoration Hardware that I saw on Lissa's blog, A Dash of Humble Pie. Her home is absolutely gorgeous and I fell in love with these pillows and she was kind enough to tell me where she got them. Here is a shot of her home:

And of course it's hard to do a post without a few pictures of Miss Lillabel. Especially seeing how I know my family is going through major withdrawels now after her departure.

Here are a few from the farmer's market in Colonial Williamsburg on Saturday (although its kind of hard to tell we are at the farmer's market in these pics).

Her Auntie Dana spent the morning teaching her how to cross her arms and pout, something she mastered quite well as a child (thanks alot Dana!) =)

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Yay! We are officially open for business again! Right now we just have our Etsy shop up and running. We are holding off on reopening the shop section of our regular website for right now. As mentioned we don't have everything up yet. We will be adding the rest of our products over the next several weeks. The screenprinted items should be ready either next week or the week after. Along with women's and children's screenprinted tees we will also be offering a few totes and hoodies. We will be offering a few of the screenprinted shirts in plus sizes and if they do well, will be adding more. Unfortunately, we haven't found any plus size shirts that we like enough to do the rosettes on. If anyone has any suggestions to where we can find some wholesale please let me know. We also have some maternity shirts with rosettes officially in the works. We found a great high-end maternity company who we are getting the shirts from. We have placed our order with them and as soon as they arrive we will be adding the rosettes and will have them for sale. We haven't gotten a ship date for them yet, though, so I am not sure how long it will be.

We have also added a SALE/DISCONTINUED section to our shop. The items in this section are things that we will no longer be carrying so if you see it there it is probably either the last one we have available or one of the last ones.

Now on to Fairyland...=).......Before there was Dear Lillie I made some shirts for a bachelorette party for my sister. They had this quote on them. It is one of my favorite quotes and we have held several birthday parties with this theme (sad to say, we were in our twenties and much too old to be having fairyland birthday parties, but seeing how when we were little girls we wanted to be boys and wanted basketball themed parties, we were just making up for lost time....) Anyway here is the quote:

There is such a place as fairyland -

but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they

have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot

find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates

of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the

common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair,

lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from

that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles.

The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland."

— L.M. Montgomery (The Story Girl)

For Jamie's bachelorette party I used other images from her wedding theme, but for our Dear Lillie shirts, I decided to use the quote exactly as I did for her shirts, but instead of the other images just used a simple silhouette laid over it. I wasn't quite happy with it, though, and hadn't been able to put my finger on what else it needed. I showed a picture of it to Jessica at Joyfolie, and she knew exactly what to add! She suggested a little bow. I actually have been planning on adding some jersey and cotton flowers to several other shirts with screenprinted quotes but haven't had time for that yet, so I was so excited at the bow idea. I think for this one I am going to use a long lace ribbon and have it tied in a bow in the toddler and older girl's hair. Unfortunately, I don't have a shirt printed yet or I would show you, so you will just have to imagine the bow part for now and then hopefully next week I will have one to show you and maybe even have them available for sale by the end of next week!

Well, I had better be getting back to work! Don't forget to enter "blog discount" if you make any Dear Lillie purchases from now until Tuesday night!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

I hope you are all having a wonderful Saturday! Lillie slept in this morning which was WONDERFUL!!!! And then we headed off to the Farmer's Market and Trader Joe's and then home for lunch and a nap for Lillie and now I am busy working away. I had some computer stuff to catch up before I start sewing so figured I might as well do this post now instead of waiting until tonight.

Now that we are all getting settled back into our routines (well, actually some family members are still recovering from our summer in NH - my brother, Jason, wrote a very entertaining postabout how he is feeling now that Lillie has departed Moose Mountain. If you are up for a laugh you should head on over to his blog and check it out. However, if you do read it I would like to clarify that Lillie actually only watched Barney ONCE the entire six weeks we were there and she only watched it for about 30 seconds and I DO NOT spoon feed her chocolate all day long...just every hour or so...haha...) Anyway, I am getting sidetracked, sorry! Now that we are all getting settled back and and seeing how we are reopening on Monday we figured it was time to get back to doing some giveaways. We have a whole bunch of them planned for the upcoming months so stay tuned!

For this giveaway we will be offering our lovely new Montgomery Clutch! The winner will receive the Montgomery Clutch in a Coral Print (with your choice of plain or with a burnt-edge flower). We also will be offering this clutch in several other colors on our website (ivory, black, and even a new plaid flannel for fall!)

It is so incredibly easy to enter this giveaway!

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post! You don't have to have a blog to enter, either. If you aren't a blogger, just enter a comment and then where it says "comment as" scroll down near the bottom and click on anonymous. However, if you do that, make sure to leave your e-mail address in the comment so that we can contact you if you win! If you have a blog or a profile where we can get your e-mail address tehn you don't need to worry about that part. If we draw the name of someone who we have no way of contacting we will simply draw a new name. You can comment each day if you would like to up your chances!

For an extra entry head on over to my sister, Jamie's blog, "The Penny Candy Blog" and become a follower.Jamie is the one who designs and makes all of the Dear Lillie clutches, along with most of our wedding items. She is so talented! She is also a wonderful writer and just started a blog last week so be sure to follow it and then come back here and just write "PC Follower". She has done a couple of recent posts showing outfits that would look cute with these clutches that make me want to get all dressed up! My favorite post, though, is her very first one!

And of course we would love it if you follow this blog, as well, but it isn't a requirement to enter!

The winner will be chosen a week from now on Saturday, the 28th.

Also as a thank you to all of our followers we will be offeringFREE SHIPPING for all of our blog readers for Monday and Tuesday! This applies to everything but the tutus. The tutus will be 10% off for all of our blog followers. Because Etsy doesn't have a place to put a discount code, we will refund you the shipping cost and the 10% off the tutus later once your paypal payment has come through. Please allow 24 hours for your refund. To get this discount make sure to write "blog discount" somewhere in the message to seller so we know to refund you!

And lastly, although we will be opening on Monday we will not be listing all of our items right away. We will be listing as much as we can, but will be adding the rest of our items throughout the next couple of weeks. All of our screen printed items are supposed to be printed this coming week so I am hoping to take photos next weekend and have them available to sell sometime next week. We also will only be open six days a week now. We will be closing our shop every Sunday so we can have one day off each week.

Okay, that's all for now folks! Good luck with the give-away and have a beautiful weekend!